Research Associate I (Part-time)

Company Description

EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT CENTER (EDC)

EDC is one of the world’s leading nonprofit research and development firms.  EDC designs, implements, and evaluates programs to improve education, health, and economic opportunity worldwide. Collaborating with both public and private partners, we strive for a world where all people are empowered to live healthy, productive lives.

EDC’s approach to equity, diversity, and inclusion is grounded in EDC’s commitment to respect the dignity of each individual. EDC has a commitment to promoting equity and access to high quality education and health services that contribute to thriving communities where people from diverse backgrounds learn, live, and work together. EDC expresses its commitment to increasing equity through its strategies, services and products, which contribute to building capacity and transforming lives.

Job Description

The Center for Children and Technology (CCT) is looking for a part-time Research Associate 1. CCT is a research and development center within the Education Development Center (EDC) and is based in New York City. Founded in 1980, CCT investigates how technology can influence and enhance teaching and learning across a wide range of educational settings. CCT conducts basic, applied, causal and formative research, working in collaboration with educational, corporate, government and research institutions. CCT also designs and develops prototype software and instructional resources that support engaged, active learning.  We offer a dynamic and highly collaborative work environment that seeks to answer challenging and practical questions about teaching and learning and is centered on teachers and students and the tools that can help create equitable and successful learning environments.

We are currently searching for a Research Associate I who can work at 50% effort (20 hours/week) with our team on two different projects funded by the National Science Foundation. Candidates for this position must be located in New York City, Pittsburgh or Albuquerque and be able to travel to the other sites at least once per year and travel to research conferences in Years 2 and 3 of the project.

Project 1: The Research Associate I will conduct program evaluation of an online game design and employment skills workshop for autistic youth. As the external evaluation team on this collaborative project, our team will analyze data on student computational thinking skills, staff, student, and parent perceptions of workshop outcomes, and fidelity of implementation. The Research Associate I will assist with quantitative and qualitative data cleaning, data analysis, and support the synthesis of research findings into key recommendations for the project team. The work will include collecting and analyzing survey data, direct student assessments, and qualitative data, but other data types may be included. Experience analyzing mixed-methods data from multiple different participant groups and providing recommendations for the program team are essential. The role also includes providing general support for evaluation activities as this project nears its completion date.

Project 2: On this three-year project, the Research Associate I will be part of a team working with museums/science centers in New York, Pittsburgh and Albuquerque that are developing a practitioner guide for creating informal engineering design programs with and for neurodiverse audiences using universal design for learning (UDL) principles. The researcher will conduct co-design research with neurodivergent youth on a design team as well as qualitative and quantitative research to investigate whether the UDL-based programs influence neurodiverse children’s engagement in engineering design processes; and whether UDL fosters a sense of belongingness for neurodiverse children and their caregivers. To achieve these research purposes, the researcher will gather data including interviews with the youth co-designers and their families; as well as observations, interviews, and surveys with children and caregivers who participate in pilot programs. Thematic analyses will use inductive and deductive methods, generating and applying coding schemes based on prior studies of belongingness and engineering design processes in informal learning environments.

You will:  

• Conduct research & data analysis for the above projects using qualitative, quantitative, and survey administration methodology
• Maintain project records and report to partner organizations and funding agencies
• Prepare recommendations for the project team and additional partners based on research and evaluation findings.
• Write and edit materials, presentations, publications, and other dissemination documents to share the results of each project.
• Contribute to proposals and coordinate pr